September, 1997
Michigan Land Trustees of America, inc., is a non-profit corporation approved as a charatable foundation. We seek to accomplish the following: Promote small scale farming and sustainable agriculture. Help revitalize rural communities Explore agricultural alternatives which emphasize harmony and kinship with the Earth (No small feat.)
The Michigan Land Trustees began at a time when there was a lot of optimism. It began at a time when a lot of people thought that we were on the verge of a solar age and that there were certainly some things more substantial than consumption and purchases and that our civilization would finally begin treading lightly on our fragile planet. While that optimism hasn't completely faded, 1 do believe that most of us are still reeling from the cosmic sucker-punch best exemplified by the Age of Reagan. (Even Frances Moore Lappe' conceded a few years back that her children wore Nikes.) So here we are? Now what?
Hopefully, the MLT newsletter has helped people who even remotely find themselves aligned with the aforementioned objectives make connections.
From its inception until 1989, the newsletter was ably produced by Sally Kaufman. Since then, 1 have had the pleasure of scrounging for submissions. (Sally ran with a crowd of artists, intellectuals, and academics and they all tend to be verbose.) These days, about 60 to 75 households and organizations receive the newsletter which comes out several times a year. For this retrospective, several members were asked to review back issues from the past ten years. The following are some of the articles that they suggested merit reprinting.
Michael Phillips, Editor
On March 23, 1976, the mailman brought a letter to our box posted by Joe Filonowicz in Orchard Lake, Michigan: "It is my understanding you have a homesteading school. I am in the process of setting up a North Carolina and a Michigan Land Trust. The NC community is already in operation. We would like to start in Michigan this summer. We have the land. We need some good homesteaders; with or without money. Perhaps some of your graduates would be interested... If you are receptive I would like to come over and see you..." And so began our relationship with the Filonowitz's and the beginnings of Michigan Land Trustees.
There followed an exchange of letters and visits among the three architects of MLT: Joe, Maynard, and Paul Schultz, presently a fruit grower in Lawrence. Three perspectives on land trusts had to be mediated. Joe saw need for a radical reform in agriculture: community land trusts as corporate alternative to private ownership for ecological improvement. Paul, while agreeing with these ecological concerns (he was one of the founders of Organic Growers of Michigan), also wanted a land trust to make land available to the disinherited, e.g., settled out migrant workers. While sharing these concerns, Maynard had his own agenda: getting our homesteading program institutionalized at Western Michigan University. Michigan Land Trustees was chartered in July, 1976. The incorporators were Joe Filonowicz, Paul Schultz, Maynard Kaufman, and Eugene Suchy (a Detroit accountant and an associate of Joe’s).
And the work went on. By-laws were written, as well as a brochure for publicity. Issues of balance between the Board of Directors and the members, or trustees; the relationship between the Board and the leasee of land to be acquired by MLT had to be resolved. Our original application to the IRS for tax-exempt status was based on the idea that land would be acquired and made available through long-term lease arrangements to persons who would agree to use it productively and maintain its ecological integrity. The IRS, however, ruled that our status as a non-profit organization would not be compatible with acquiring and leasing farm land as our primary purpose.
Finally, a combination of factors came together to convince the IRS to give MLT status as a public foundation in June of 1977. Maynard had been working out a proposal for a Homesteading Program at Western Michigan University. During the winter term, Homesteading Theory would be taught on campus, followed by Homesteading Practice on an MLT Farm. Joe agreed to finance the farm and housing for the program. Maynard then went to Dr. Cornelius Loew, Vice President for Academic Affairs at WMU, and presented the proposal that the university hire the farm instructor and provide start-up funds. With the backing of Dr. Loew, a cooperative effort began between MLT and WMU. since the Homesteading Program demonstrated our educational purpose, the IRS granted Michigan Land Trustees a 509(a)(I) status. Stu Shafer, a "graduate" of Maynard's and Sally's School of Homesteading, was selected as the 1st instructor. The Land Trust Homesteading Farm was leased to Stu with the provision that he instruct the homesteading students from WMU.
By the Fall of 1977, the Board of)Directors had grown to include Bill Kobza, Ken Dahlberg, and Tom Breznau, in addition to Joe, Maynard, and Paul. Advisors to the Board were Fred Hinkley, Van Buren County Extension Service, and Steve Small, a lawyer from Benton Harbor. The combination of funding, imagination, time, and the commitment of all these people brought the Michigan Land Trustees into existence.
Sally and Maynard Kaufman
The land trust was a modest proposal to provide a rational model of an alternative way to American life: on the land and in the city, a symbiotic relationship of man and nature, and man and man. It has not been a rousing success. Why? Because it is too rational. Man does not live by rationality but by irrational beliefs. The pages of our newspapers and TV newscasts confirm this fact daily. The last people to live in harmony with the land were the primitives. They believed in the magic of nature. Their souls resided in nature. They were very spiritual. They followed complex myths to explain a complex nature.
The march of civilization has been the explaining of complex matters in ever simpler, rationalistic terms, now called ideologies; actually, abbreviated myths. Some of the latest popular heresies we worship are science, technology, economics, "unreal" estate, education, and, of course, capitalism and communism. Capitalism believes in liberty and equality; but people are not equal and so you end up with the poor and the rich. Communism denies liberty; so people may learn --through education--to be equal. Again, people are not equal and you end with the rich commissars and the poor communicants:
Tell me comrade, what is the difference between capitalism and communism ?
Man 's inhumanity to man is the basis of capitalism.
And communism ?
Just the reverse, Comrade.
All ideologies lead to irrational civilizations because they are based on the irrational needs of individuals and societies. We are too prideful of our assumed rationality to admit to this condition. But irrationality is not to be scorned, it is the basis for new creativity for the new civilizations that are born and must die along the road of history. All we can do is point to the daily facts of our declining civilization and list some of the current signs of failure in some of our pet ideologies, such as science, technology, farming, and political science:
The explosion of the Challenger rocket.
The explosion of the chemical plant at Bopal, India.
The explosion of the nuclear plant at Chernobyl. (Tell me, Comrade, what has feathers and glows in the dark? Chicken Kiev!)
The inability after 40 years to find a dumping ground for atomic waste.
The increase in armaments to decrease the chances of war.
Terrorism: the clash of ideologies.
Drugs, the biggest of world businesses, to soothe the mind of irrational realities.
Iowa congressman, Jim Leach, reports: If you put the whole state of Iowa up for sale today, you would find it's half as valuable as it was five years ago--and that's for everything in the state. Iowa faces the problems of a developing country in the Third World. This is the result of the absurdity of placing faith in the state cow college agricultural scientists and bank economics. It is ironic and indicative of modern farm science that high-tech Iowa farms are going broke in the late 20th Century while the Amish farmer of Pennsylvania is growing richer by still plowing with 19th Century horses. It was one of the early messages of the land trust that this situation was bound to occur.
The land trust is just a sign post along the road of history. As we said at the beginning, homesteading is too rational for this culture. The Amish have a workable myth; its theology. Of course, we do not like Amish theology. But it works for them. A new irrationality has to be added for the land trust to become an operant myth. The French anthropologist, Levi-Strauss, says that "a myth is an act of faith in a science yet unborn." A great starting point for the new myth is the Uncertainty Principle defined by the post-Einsteinian physicist, Werner Heisenberg. It expresses in quantum mathematical terms the reality of nature. Everything is in flux. Reality is energy, motion, moonbeams in a jar... nothing is ever in a place where you can measure it. Measuring it changes it; scientists are lost without measurement. Measuring makes it certain. In philosophical terms, the universe is complex, uncertain, mystical, and magical. We are back where the primitive began. Einstein did not like this view of things. He said, "God does not play dice with the universe." We don't know that. But we do know that man can play craps with nature... and crap out.
Where do we find the new myth? Look to the poet, the artist, the musician. They are already beginning to express it. Its roots today are in the planet-wide information society, forming courtesy of science and technology. Through mass communication, something entirely novel to the world, a nation can bodily hold hands across 3000 miles for a common cause. It also allows the tuning of minds across the world in a common, spiritual consciousness--a force growing more powerful than any government. Something supra-irrational. It's coming. As Franz Kafka said, "All human error is impatience... a delusive pinning down of a delusion." Man is a theological animal; he always has been and always will be. Today, he has lost his soul; he is in search of a new theology, not a new religion. We need a theology that respects the creation, not a religion that idolizes a false creator. If you do not understand what had been written here, do not despair. Neither do I. This is just the way things seem to be.., awesome.
Joe Filonowicz
The demands of the market economy constitute the greatest stress on the family and is the greatest threat to its survival. Higher prices demand higher wages, the latter of which may not exist ten years into the future.
As the market--the formal economy--attempts to supplant more and more of the home's services, the family must either have more money to pay for these services or be willing to diligently resist the market's influence and intrusion. By taking creative and perhaps daring measures outside of the formal economy the family can be assured that its needs will continue to be met.
"Two or more persons related by blood or adoption" is the legally recognized definition of a family. The traditional nuclear model consists of married parents and children aged from birth through early adulthood. For much of the United States, the nuclear family is still the most common means of raising the young and nurturing its members. The extended family, common to our old world ancestry, has been replaced by the nuclear family’s friendship extensions. Friendships have replaced kinships as family supports.
Looking at the variations of the word family, familiar more accurately invokes the essence of the current model. Smaller families also mean fewer people for kinship; a more diversified and mobile population has created different family bonds from previous generations. People create supports based on common interest and experiences out of the basic human need for interrelatedness. Due to our mobility and diversity we base our choice of support on like needs rather than the pioneer necessity of relying solely upon one's own family. From this basis we might move away from our cultural priority of independence to a more realistic interdependence of like-minded individuals.
Families need not fit the traditional model. They may be of several generations of unrelated adults; they may be a collective of the homeless or of a specific religious or spiritual practice or of gay or lesbian persons. In reality, "family" is not narrowly defined. Nevertheless, a great many people may not fit into any family model, given the fragmentation and individualistic structure of our society.
To support our families (however they may be defined) in the coming times of financial need and resource depletion will require the move towards a more cooperative society not only for our physical needs but for our need to be connected to one another.
Ironically, our present material wealth is also a major threat to the unity of the family. Self-sufficiency is undermined by modern conveniences. The family is bombarded with slick manipulation by advertisers selling us on the latest convenience. Unfortunately, no where in our culture are we being sold on the very real need to be able to rely on our own gifts and abilities in order to provide for ourselves. The schools socialize our children for ease of entry into, and acceptance of the formal economy while media images foster the belief that no real alternative exists.
To counter this, parents can encourage children to think creatively by offering different points of view. Libraries are excellent resources for parents who wish to expose their children to other points of view. Television, likewise, needs to be balanced with a healthy skepticism--if it is to be utilized at all-as it is probably the first item you will want to trade away in exchange for your neighbor's clothesline! Parents can become more involved in the children's' schooling from participation in local community groups or even educating them at home.
The market economy also threatens families by the time demands made on those who participate in it (leaving aside discussion of how difficult it is not to participate in it). The amount of time spent working for money predetermines the amount of energy and time one can spend on freeing oneself from it as well as the needs of family and personal nurturing.
Given that it is our dependence and reliance on a system which threatens family survival, planning our withdrawal is of immediate concern. Money is a very real and constant issue. Landlords do not barter for rent, nor are mortgage companies interested in shares from one's garden. Some alternatives include: house sharing, communal living, building one's own home (Much cheaper than paying someone else to do it!), or passing on the family home from one generation to the next.
In the past, large families and kinship groups often shared dwellings. Shared living space was only one aspect of the community which shared many of the risks, tasks, and joys of life. Today, groups of people could divide household expenses into more manageable amounts than can the nuclear family thus freeing its members to devote more time to nurturing themselves and their household. Many an old farm house and neglected Victorian-era city home can be come by inexpensively. Since this is such a sound and practical solution to a most basic problem why so few people in the United States choose this lifestyle deserves examination.
One possibility may be that not only are we an individualistic society but we are a disturbed individualistic society. Great social fracturing and change has occurred with in the last 60 years. some of this change has had its roots in an earlier, rigid conformity--demanded for the sake of national unity. Conformity demanded at the total, or near total, sacrifice of the individual will ultimately fail. This rigidity and insistence that the need of the individual be subjugated to the needs of the whole may have sent many of its members off to seek freedom and autonomy. Ironically, a culture whose members make no allowance for the need for interconnection is equally sick. Therefore, in our endeavors to restore and promote unity--to more closely share in each other's lives--we are challenged to allow both the individual and the group to flourish.
The family's withdrawal from the market economy can be furthered by itemizing just where income (our umbilical cord to the formal market) is being drained away and where non-market (informal) function can take the place of the "bought" item or service. Gardening and home canning not only saves money but is satisfying to both the taste buds and the spirit. Such activities can also foster family unity. Energy conservation measures pay for themselves quickly, and even the truly broke can winterize with cheap or free materials. (Newspaper is an excellent insulator for drafts, doorjambs, etc.) Household energy savings can be achieved by simply no longer wasting. The basics of turning off the light when you leave the home or dressing for the season are fine examples. Clothing and other household items are easy to acquire at garage sales, flea markets, and thrift stores. Cars can be shared just as houses can. In fact, car sharing is probably a more realizable goal for our individualistic society than is mass sharing of our dwellings. Automobile costs are exorbitant--everything from their actual purchase to the mandatory insurance one must acquire. Repair and fuel costs have and will continue to skyrocket. In a society or community which seeks to remove itself from the world made by the formal economy, the need to rely on the auto and the desire for private ownership of it will decrease, paving the way (no pun intended) for the neighborhood sharing of cars just as we might share lawn mowers.
Families need to take stock of their non-monetary assets and skills--their informal economic strengths. Most households contain many goods which contribute to self-sufficiency. Home canning equipment, the sewing machine, cooking facilities, construction and home maintenance tools are only a few of the many implements families may have which enable them to provide more and better for themselves. Households contain a wealth of such goods to provide self-service in direct opposition to the market economy which asks families to instead buy service.
Family skills include carpentry, canning, gardening, parenting, crafts (knitting, crochet, sewing, wood working), and animal husbandry. Homes are place of charm and nurturing, or at least they have that potential. Yet, as Scott Burns states so convincingly in the Household Economy, such activities are not recognized for their true value since no dollar amount is attached to them. Families can begin to think in terms of providing for their needs without the use of money. Perhaps the childless household may wish to provide occasional child care for the family next door in exchange for labor to help repair their dwelling? Not only is service provided for each, but lives are enriched by the personal interaction.
We all have skills and abilities which we may share with one another to our mutual benefit and growth even though we are not used to thinking of ourselves in this way given the dominance of the market economy and the long shadow it extends across our culture. One aspect of its shadow concerns the government's intrusion into the home. Zoning laws, burial regulations, birth control issues, and prohibitions against domestic livestock are some examples in which government has sought to control the family.
Individuals and communities need to work with local governing bodies to assure that groups of unrelated adults who have similar goals will not be excluded from the neighborhoods of single family dwellings" or the benefits bestowed upon the latter. Where we once experienced all the big events of living within our own homes, from the births of our children to our last moments on Earth, these have now been taken over by institutions and regulations situated in faceless and impersonal buildings. We can instead discern our own personal and spiritual needs in the bringing in and sending on of the living, and based on that, communicate our choices to local governments and hospitals (where legal obstacles may exist). Families can again control these crescendo experiences of our lives. Midwifery is a very practical application of the desire for a more family-centered birth without institutional intrusion. A midwife attended birth is also less costly and, in many cases, less dangerous than a hospital birth.
Perhaps no one in the family has known as much institutional intrusion in its life as has the baby. The family has a multitude of abilities to provide for the care of this person new person without reliance on the numerous gadgetry offered by the corporate world. Breast feeding is the ideal nourishment. Cloth diapers replace the artificial need for prompt disposal of anything remotely untidy. Baby food can easily be made at home. Family unity and satisfaction have the potential to increase when the family provides for the care of its newest member in such direct and self-reliant ways.
Likewise, the hospice movement has begun to return to the dying control and dignity. It also allows loved ones greater access to the terminally ill. It has also helped to shape our individualistic society into something more humane and compassionate; and it enabled death to come back into focus and not shamefully hidden away as an event we don't want or need to deal with.
In order to encourage and utilize many of the family's skills, we must be egalitarian in nature. Tasks need to be shared; not isolated to whichever gender the culture has deemed suitable to its accomplishment. Traditional roles need to be relaxed. In the ecological household we are all consumers and producers; we are all bread winners (bread bakers?) and consumers of the bread.
The greatest change which must be made for the family to begin its adjustment to a regenerative society can only come from with its individual members. Informal discussions of our hopes and dreams, finding out what others have said and done about such changes through the local library, and a willingness to go where no institutions will lead are the tool families may use to accomplish this endeavor. Ultimately, the family's survival depends upon its awareness of what is truly threatening to its unity and what is truly supportive of its tasks, and that we maintain the ability to overcome the subtle, and not so subtle, institutional inducements to remain in ignorance.
Sharon Crotser, 1992
This essay proposes that the rediscovery of self-reliant activities in households and communities will open a more dependable way to economic security and lead to ecological sustainability.
It is time to consider a Third Way to economic security in addition to jobs and welfare payments. Neither the private sector nor the public sector can be trusted to offer well-being to people or to care about the sustainability of our ecological life-support system. This essay proposes that the rediscovery of self-reliant activities in households and communities will open a more dependable way to economic security and lead to ecological sustainability.
The Third Way is needed for three inter-related reasons. First, to help those who are impoverished by inequities in the present system, second, to restore civil peace and revitalize local communities, and third, to help our society move toward a more sustainable lifestyle. These three goals will reinforce each other in synergistic ways. But they all depend on the homecoming of economics. For too long economics has been "out there" serving the interests of industry and government rather than the people. The market economy has grown at the expense of the household economy.
What is "the economy"? Most of the time we tend to see it in the market, or exchange, economy where goods and services, or stocks and bonds, are bought and sold. But we need to distinguish more clearly between different forms of economic activity. There is a difference between the market economy, where people earn money to buy things, and the redistribution economy, where people receive money from the state to buy things when they cannot earn money. In both cases, however, in both private and public sectors, money is the means of exchange.
The household economy, in contrast, is a form of nonmonetized activity, involving production for use rather than production for sale, as in backyard gardening or food preparation. Since so many of these activities have been displaced by the market economy we no longer have a word for them. The phrase "household economy" implies subsistence activities, as in pre-industrial societies, but much more, including many community-based activities are also involved.
Alfredo de Romana, following Ivan Illich, (see bibliography) uses the word "vernacular" to denote cashless but productive activities in the household and community. Our use of the word "vernacular" with reference to language learned at home instead of language taught in schools, reflects this originally broader meaning. These spontaneous vernacular activities, through which people individually and collectively satisfy everyday needs, differ from satisfying needs by buying industrially-produced goods and services through the market economy. And it is these vernacular activities that need to be rediscovered by opening a Third Way to economic security.
In addition to vernacular activities, which are outside the money economy, there are many "informal" economic activities somewhere intermediate between the vernacular realm and the formal economy of regular full-time employment. These informal economic activities include various human services, appliance repair, arts and crafts which may be home-based, part-time, low-profile, and freelance, but produce goods and services for sale on a local level. Barter systems on a community level can also be seen as part of this informal economy.
The commodification of goods and services through the formal market economy has nearly obliterated vernacular and informal activities and weakened a sense of community. As "new" goods and services are marketed we are able to notice the loss of what had been a community function. A commercial dating service reminds us that we used to meet friends of our friends at parties. The nursing home reminds us that aging parents used to be cared for in the home. Restaurants, where people eat about 40% of their food, remind us that we used to prepare and eat food at home or with friends. Working out at a fitness center reminds us that we used to get our exercise by gardening or playing with children or in neighborhood sports events. We tend to think of these things as hobbies, and in the vernacular realm the distinction between work and leisure is indeed blurred. As these vernacular activities are commercialized it is possible to recognize their economic value. In this process the distinction between work and leisure becomes more pronounced.
We do need to focus on economic possibilities because we live in an econo-centric society. Economic considerations are the bottom line. Because money mediates between production and consumption, it is central in our plans, hopes and fears. Our dependence on money is nearly total. As both husband and wife take jobs for money to buy goods and services, even more goods and services are commodified, such as child care and meal preparation. Such shifts from the household to the market economy create the illusion of economic growth since more monetary transactions are recorded. But it is illusory growth since there is no real increase in productivity.
Dependence on money also creates scarcity. Those goods and services that were freely available when people produced for themselves became scarce when they had to be purchased with money. Since the perception of scarcity creates value, we are in a state of constant dissatisfaction, always wanting more. The perception of scarcity thus creates demand and drives our consumer society with its destructive ecological impact. Much of this is also engineered by advertising and governmental policies in order to promote economic growth.
The unchallenged assumption among economists and politicians is that economic growth is necessary to improve our economic well-being. In fact this is a lie. Although the economy, as measured by the Gross National Product (GNP), is growing, wages have been falling as more workers chase fewer jobs. This leads to a shrinking of the middle class and a growing underclass -- people either unfit for work in advanced industrial society or actually rendered superfluous by labor-saving, or really labor-displacing, machinery.
Two developments during the past year lend special urgency to the need for a Third Way. The first is the effort to generate economic growth on a global scale through free trade agreements-- the North American Free Trade Agreement and GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It may be that these agreements will indeed promote more economic growth, but it is also likely that they will result in the loss of jobs in the United States as manufacturing corporations move their plants to Mexico or other countries in search of cheap labor and looser regulations. Free trade agreements were opposed by many grass-roots groups, especially labor and environmental groups, because they were expected to reduce job opportunities and weaken health, safety and environmental regulations. But corporate interests, with their powerful lobbies, prevailed, and free trade agreements were approved. As these agreements come into effect American workers will see fewer jobs and lower wages as they compete in a global job market.
The second recent development is the electoral victory of Republicans in Congress and their determination to cut welfare benefits. This reinforces the mood to curtail welfare programs which was already strong in many states. In some ways this may be necessary to regenerate self-esteem in welfare recipients. Thus some politicians argue that training for jobs should substitute for welfare payments. But if the jobs to be provided are simply "made work" at public expense, "useless employment", it would be better to affirm "useful unemployment" in which people are encouraged and guided in household and community production of goods and services for use. In a society where the market economy has obscured the possibility of vernacular activities it is sheer folly to expect people spontaneously to rediscover these activities. Cuts in welfare must be coordinated with policies which open the Third Way.
These two developments will certainly exacerbate the problems of underpaid working people and unemployed people. The prospects for a recovery of general well-being through economic growth are dismal. Since a share of economic growth has been illusory, simply a shift from household to market, and since paying interest on the national debt now takes nearly one out of five tax dollars, it is not surprising that economic growth does not help people. Perhaps this is a good thing. As Alfredo de Romana suggested, "we do not need an 'economic recovery' as much as a cultural renewal." Perceptive people are beginning to see that the materialistic assumptions which under gird the quest for economic growth are dysfunctional in both environmental and social contexts. The paramount question in our time is this: how can citizens live with economic recession and still maintain a sense of well-being?
It should be clear that the term "recession" implies a slowdown or even reversal in the rate of economic growth as measured by the GNP. This entails less dependence on manufactured products and more production on the vernacular and informal levels. Recession in this sense is eventually necessary to preserve environmental quality and to restore global equity. We Americans, 6% of the world's population, consume 35% of the world's resources and generate more greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, than any other country on a per capita basis. We need to search for a better balance or synergy between industrial and household production.
We can learn to affirm economic recession only if we open the Third Way to economic security. As long as people are dependent on commodities, as long as materialistic values in our consumer-oriented society prevail, people will feel cheated when they have less money to spend. When unlimited desires are frustrated by limited means, the result is civil discontent and more violence in our streets. One could say that people have been misled by rising expectations, but in fact alternatives to the money economy have been destroyed and new opportunities along the Third Way have yet to be promoted.
The social deterioration resulting from high levels of consumption in our urban-industrial society is also a reason to change our way of life. Certainly some sort of socioeconomic reorientation is necessary to counter the anomie and alienation which is manifest in high levels of crime, drug use, child abuse and neglect, along with other similar problems. The United States, the richest nation in the world, holds a higher percentage of its citizens in prison, and for longer terms, than any other nation. Something is seriously wrong here. Too many people in our society are without jobs or meaningful work. They have lost dignity and self-respect. Only 0.17 of one percent of the work done in our society is done with human muscle. We need to use less fossil fuel energy and more muscle. We need more meaningful work. Production for use in the household and community would help people gain self-respect and help to revitalize communities.
Will people want to go "back" to raising their own food and "return" to a lifestyle that demands more physical effort and personal initiative? This will certainly sound retrogressive to many. But others, as we can see from the experiments of the 1970's, such as voluntary simplicity, appropriate technology, communal living, and homesteading, have chosen these possibilities even though they were not promoted by government or community leaders. It may be that people during the 1970's felt free to experiment because they still felt affluence around them. That spontaneity may not be repeated. Now it may be necessary to open the Third Way in order to help people cope with the decline of affluence generally and with real hardships in the underclass. The stick of economic necessity may help to move people toward a more self-reliant lifestyle in harmony with the ecosystem and its natural energy flows. But many people can also respond to the carrots: new opportunities and the joys and satisfactions that more self-reliance and personal independence can bring.
Since a large share of vernacular activities have been considered women's work (housework, child care, food preparation) one of the real challenges in promoting these activities is to do so in a way which preserves equality between the sexes. It is at least theoretically possible for a couple to share such work and the fact that so many women are working outside of the home has helped many couples rethink household responsibilities. Patriarchy is being rejected and discredited by many educated young people. The Third Way must be promoted along with the conscious rejection of patriarchy and a conscious choice for free partnership between the sexes.
The Third Way, with its new emphasis on household production, should not be rejected because household work was gendered in the past. In a post-patriarchal ethos members of a household can freely negotiate and choose the work they do. And we must bear in mind that the industrial economy is not providing jobs for everyone and that the sexes are still not equally rewarded in it for the work they do even when they do the same work.
Finally, it is important to recognize that there are virtually no advocates for non-monetized economic activity such as the production of goods and services for use in households and local communities. Since the market economy emerged two hundred years ago along with the industrial revolution, it has everywhere been promoted and aided by the state. Both government and business promote a shift from vernacular activities to the money economy, the one for tax revenue and the other for profit. Churches and schools are also dependent on a share of the cash flow.
Schools teach students to be good consumers but it is extremely rare to find places where schools explicitly teach students about the possibility of vernacular and informal economic activities. Schooling is often little more than job training. The best academic minds are also colonized by the market economy. Not only are they personally dependent on it in an economic way, they are part of a system that provides professional services, which it prescribes, for its clientele.
If there are so few advocates for the Third Way, how can we expect it will be opened? Certainly the prevailing ideology is focused on the job and money economy. But ideology may give way to necessity as politicians recognize that if there are not enough jobs to go around, welfare cuts will force more people to seek money through extra-legal ways. This would divert more money to a "black" or "underground" economy already swollen with drug money. The cost of crime control and prisons is already a burden on taxpayers. If the first two ways to economic security, jobs and welfare, are failing for more and more people, surely the Third way must be given consideration.
Those of us who see the logic of the Third Way can work on various levels to promote it. We can participate in more vernacular activities in our personal lives. We can recommend the Third Way to our elected representatives on state and national levels. It needs to be recognized as public policy. So far politicians, under pressure from corporate lobbies, are inclined to keep subsidizing corporations and industries in order to stimulate economic growth or prevent economic collapse. We must challenge this as a stupid, futile and counter-productive strategy. Eventually some politician somewhere will recognize that the Third Way is in the public interest.
Most importantly, we can work with or organize local community-based groups to actually facilitate vernacular activities and more production in the informal economy. It is on this community level that the Third Way will be opened. The following list may help to suggest projects for community organizations.
1. Promote awareness of economic opportunities in the non-monetized or informal economy and help people recognize that they can do productive work even though they are unemployed-- "useful unemployment."
2. Empower people by helping them recognize that they have skills and abilities that they can trade or use outside of the money economy so that they can move toward self-reliance on the household and community levels.
3. Facilitate community barter systems such as LETS, Local Exchange and Trading System, so people can help themselves by helping each other and building community.
4. Develop educational materials, workshops, courses, and schools to help people learn self- reliant technologies such as sewing, gardening, canning, home building and repair, mechanical repair of tools and appliances, renewable energy devices and energy-efficient techniques.
5. Develop a "micro-enterprise" revolving loan fund to help people acquire equipment needed for self-provisioning activities and/or cottage industries.
6. Organize community garden projects and provide access to capital assets such as land through community land trusts so that people can produce food for local use.
7. Emphasize the importance of developing local economic activities so that communities can retain and recycle their wealth and not have it sucked out by large corporations. This is especially appropriate in the case of food production, processing and distribution.
8. Explore the feasibility of community-based mutual insurance or mutual aid projects.
9. Seek a better balance or synergy between what people can produce for themselves and what can be produced by the industrial system.
10. Promote understanding of the need for full partnership between the sexes in household work so as to prevent more sexual inequality.
11. Provide leadership for the full and responsible exercise of political empowerment made possible by a greater degree of economic independence.
12. Work through elected representatives on state and federal levels to prevent further subsidies to transnational corporations and industries so that local and informal economies can thrive.
Maynard Kaufman, 1995
An Age is not like
one of our modern children
named
before it is born.
No.
Not christened before the episode
of pain which serves as
a down payment
a Foreword to the
Rule Book of Life.
No.
An Age is more like a child
of those primitive cultures
where
a name is spiritual
awarded
as part of the passage
into maturity.
Yes.
There pain becomes blended
woven into the fabric
recognized
as a curse and a blessing bond.
Yes.
We yearn for
the simplicity of
a label
But we need
the diversity of
a liquid.
An Age too complex to allow
a name
would be a good thing.
Yes.
Swan Sherman-Huntoon, 1994
The restructuring of agriculture and rural regions required to move towards more sustainable agricultural and food systems also offers neighborhood and city reformers many possibilities to rethink, restructure, and localize their own food systems in order to make them healthier. What restructuring? What food systems? Why localize? My neighborhood activist friends ask.
What restructuring? Current agriculture(national and international) is unsustainable. Not only does it impose extremely high health, social, and environmental costs, but it is highly fossil-fuel dependent. In the US it takes roughly ten energy calories to deliver one food calorie on our plates. As fossil fuel prices rise, there will be a huge multiplier effect on food prices with resulting chaos throughout the food system if this happens quickly. As we move into the post-fossil-fuel era, we can either wait until things collapse or start the necessary restructuring now. This restructuring will greatly affect towns and cities as well as rural regions. What food systems? And what are they anyway? It is not surprising that people raise these questions since most are aware only of production agriculture. Most city dwellers, not to mention city planners, are otherwise illiterate when it comes to their local food system. Few citizens or officials are aware of how dependent their city is upon distant national and international systems (public and private) for food and how vulnerable those systems are. Neither are they aware of the extent and complexity of their local food systems, much less their potential, and the need to develop that potential. This is reflected in the fact that no US city (or state) has a Department of Food. Equally, few people are aware that the value of the produce from all US gardens (urban and rural) is roughly equivalent to that of the corn crop (Approximately $18 billion a year!). Also, there is little awareness that agricultural, horticultural, and food-related activities constitute roughly 20-25% of a local economy (at least in those few regions where studies have been done).
What then are local food systems? The local part starts at the household level, and then expands to the neighborhood, municipal, and regional levels. At each level there are different cycles, issues, problems, and possibilities. The food part includes all of the various social, symbolic, health, power, access, and equity dimensions (things that get minimal consideration in agriculture). The systems part includes not just the production aspects of food (farmland preservation, farmers' markets, household and community gardens), but processing issues (local vs. external), distribution issues (transportation, warehousing), access issues (inner city grocery stores, school breakfasts and lunches, food stamps, the WIC program, etc.), use issues (food safety and handling, restaurants, street vendors), food recycling (gleaning, food banks, food pantries and soup kitchens), and waste stream issues (composting, garbage fed to pigs, etc..). Besides the social, economic, and environmental issues associated with the above, each also involves a number of ethical and value issues which need to be included in our understanding.
Why localize? And what are the potential benefits? Sustainable agriculturists have called for localization to increase environmental sustainability and to develop and increase local markets and reduce dependence upon distant (and often erratic)markets. Few of them have though about the other components of local food systems outlined above or how localizing food systems and having more food grown locally and regionally for local consumption opens new opportunities for neighborhoods, towns, and cities to reduce social, environmental, and economic problems. Such localization can help cities develop new ways to deal with problem of hunger, joblessness, urban decay, declining tax bases, and environmental degradation, plus help to meet the need for open and green spaces.
The vision of creating healthier, more localized and more sustainable food systems includes such things as:
Providing both long-term food security and better and better health for all local residents by making a variety of safe and nutritious food available to all;
Providing a cushion of self-reliance against transport strikes, major storms and disasters, and rising food prices resulting from oligopolies and /or rising fossil fuel prices and their multiplier effects;
Providing continuing employment for local farmers, horticulturists, and food service workers;
Empowering households and neighborhoods and making them more self-reliant by making more land, work, and employment available throughout the food system; Recycling and freeing up more local dollars for local development by increasing the energy and resource efficiency of local food systems, especially by reducing energy costs and recycling organic wastes into productive uses rather than putting them in expensive landfills; Creating a healthier, more diverse, and pleasant environment for ourselves and our grandchildren by cleaning up air, water, and soil systems and creating mole green spaces and more diverse rural landscapes, while at the same time reducing health costs and pollution clean-up costs;
Reducing the dependence of people on emergency hunger and feeding programs by moving towards hunger prevention programs.
How do we go about creating healthier local and regional food systems? At a personal level we can grow, process and preserve more of our own food. We can buy local food from farmers markets and u-picks. We can join a community supported agriculture organization. As citizens, we can support innovative neighborhood and municipal programs and organizations. One exciting example has involved the creation of food policy councils. They have sought to improve their local food systems not only by coordinating and/or networking actions, but by making policy recommendations, organizing groups, testifying and lobbying, conducting or sponsoring policy research, and doing many other creative things.
The types of issues food policy councils address include the following. Production: promoting household and community gardens; seeking to preserve local farmers and farmland; promoting community supported agriculture. Processing: encouraging local food processing plants as well as household and community canning programs. Distribution: promoting full use of available government programs (school breakfasts, food stamps, WIC, etc.); coordinating emergency feeding systems (food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks, etc.); ensuring availability of inner-city supermarkets; encouraging local farmers markets and promoting local produce. Use: promoting healthy and nutritious diets and meal preparation. Recycling and composting encouraging this throughout all phases of the food system. Waste disposal: using creative approaches to minimize the wastes generated in each stage of the food system.
Until recently, we have been blind to the importance of food in local and regional environments and economies. The emerging crises of sustainability will require us to shape and fit current fragments and pieces into genuine and sustainable food systems.
With vision, we can also do this in a way that will simultaneously empower families and neighborhoods, reduce many local problems and costs, and make our communities healthier, more self-reliant and equitable.
Kenneth A. Dahlberg, 1994
"Oh God of pig and man, help Maynard shoot straight,
if you can."
Reverend Swan Huntoon, 1980
It was the middle of September by the time I butchered the leghorns that I bought as chicks last spring. They had been a particularly voracious lot; some were nearly the size of turkeys when I did them in. They grew fat on layer mash and scratch, and they invariably got into the sweet feed and table scraps intended for the goats and pig. They ravaged the garden and set upon pumpkins, cabbage, zucchini, and cucumber. I should have kept the free-ranging bastards further away from things. They lived out their days in gluttony and sloth. I hope they were comfortable. Even now, I wince when I think about how much they cost per pound now that they're wrapped, stacked, and sitting in the freezer.
I dread butchering. I'm slow and inefficient. It takes me over an hour to put up three birds. I know a farmer who has the same problem. Last spring she bought 50 capons that are all going to die of old age.
I learned about chickens and other livestock at the MLT School of Homesteading back in 1 980. Throughout that spring and summer I was enrolled with a dozen or so other college students. 'urban discontents," old Joe Filonowicz called us. Before that, my experience with animals was pretty much limited to a succession of family dogs and a pet goldfish named "lgor." Initially the students had a lot of affection for the farm animals. Sometimes we would feed grain or clover by hand to the milk cows and young steers, and we would pet the goats and rub the sows' bellies if they let us near. Not surprisingly, it was tense on those cool, crisp spring mornings when we gathered with Jon Towne or Maynard Kaufman to slaughter something. To us urban discontents, luring a pig or steer out into the open to plunk it between the eyes with a .22 and cut its throat, then hoist it from the barn rafters to eviscerate and cut it into pieces was disconcerting. It was difficult to relate the cow parts lying in a wheelbarrow on their way to Maynard's band saw and grinder with the cellophane-wrapped ground chuck at our Spartan store. Certainly no else had done this kind of thing since World War II.
We were eager to attach religious significance to the task. (All of us had been affected by The Sacred and the Profane, by Mircea Eliade.) Thereafter, whenever a hog was to be butchered or a hen was to be stewed, someone would fumble for an appropriate invocation before the kill. It was delivered with a mix of solemnity and humor, and our business-like instructors generally indulged us. (By the spring of 1980 the halcyon days of the back-to-the-land movement were over but it was still months before the grim arrival of Ronald Reagan.)
Swan Huntoon usually came up with the best prayers ("Oh god of pig and man..."). After all, he was a man of the cloth having spent $15 to be ordained by some dubious religious enterprise with a PO box in California that he discovered on the inside of a matchbook cover. Back then, after a day of farm. labor, we would gather and stay up late at night and ponder the nature of things and plot agrarian revolution. We'd play guitars and sing songs and eat carob brownies and drink lousy homemade wine. Those were some profound times.
Fifteen years and piles of chicken guts later, I don't do invocations. Actually, 1 did for a while. My neighbor showed me how to offer up each bird to the four corners of the Earth. He's kindly and soft-spoken, and he has a sweat lodge sitting in the middle of an alfalfa field. Unfortunately, I'm spiritually vacant. Moreover, I have a genetic predisposition towards cynicism compounded by the corporate welfare state, Disney, and the expiration of the solar energy tax credit back in 1984. (In these crass, material times, it's best to stay busy to avoid sulking.) So I stood before the chopping block in a cold, wet September drizzle. I clutched a hatchet with my right hand. In my left were the feet of an overgrown, upside down feathered mutant. Boneless chicken breast was only $1.99 a pound at my Spartan store and I kept thinking that for the next few hours I'11 be standing out in the mud and splattered with feathers chicken pieces. Suddenly, I had a realization. My family was safe and well-fed and some day soon one of these birds would be roasted in olive oil and garlic and made into a fine center piece for our dinner table. Ishould have offered up an invocation.
It was a long time until the last bird was dressed-out, wash, patted dry, wrapped, and thrown into the freezer. Then I went back outside and chased down the dog and brought him in for the night. Next, I took the wheelbarrow and piled up the entrails, feathers and any other remains of the flock and carted them out atop the rolling fields. There I left them in a heap as an offering to all the carrion-eating creatures above and below. I felt pretty good. When I got back to the house 1 learned that one of the boys had let the dog out. The damn dog ate well that night.
Michael Phillips, 1995
Michigan Land Trustees Newsletter, September, 1997
Michigan Land Trustees Minutes, Meeting of April 13, 1997
In attendance: Lee Maher, Mike Phillips, Lisa Phillips, Maynard Kaufman, Adrian Kaufman, Bobbi Martindale, Jon Towne, Robin Mittenthal, Sharon Crotser. The previous minutes were read and accepted.
Treasurer's report:
Balance at last report (7/28/96): $9,870.23
TOTAL DEPOSITS $3,401.67
Newsletter
Annual report $10
TOTAL DISBURSEMENTS $101.76
BALANCE, April 13, 1997 $13,170.14
A motion was made to accept the Treasurer's report which passed.
Election of New Board Members: A motion was made to bypass the by-laws' requirement that eligible individuals must have attended at least three board meetings during the year prior to election. The motion passed.
A motion was then made to place Lee Maher on the board. The motion passed.
MOFFA: Mike Phillips' letter to MOFFA regarding limiting MLT funding was read. (This was not sent.)
An amendment to the memo received by board members prior to this meeting was distributed by Maynard. Robin presented extensive information on fund raising endeavors he has undertaken for MOFFA. Executive Director funding has not yet been found despite his efforts. Therefore, MOFFA is postponing this quest. Robin's energies have then gone towards that organization membership/education campaigns. Several foundations are being contacted. A complete proposal has been sent to the Ruth Mott. Fund. Two other proposals sent out were not accepted. In submitting proposals, Robin sought foundations most likely to be sympathetic.
These activities have required 142 hours, $14 in postage, and 75 miles of travel.
The four primary projects for which funding has been sought From a variety of sources include:
1. Robin's grant writing endeavors and expenses
2. Printing and mailing expenses for educational materials on the health hazards of pesticides and related chemicals
3. Executive Director search
4. Training for farmers in organic agriculture and mentoring program.
Maynard provided further information and addressed questions regarding MOFFA's activities and plans.
Lisa moved that MLT donate $500 to cover expenses of printing and distribution of educational materials. The motion was seconded and passed. Lisa also moved that the MLT donate $3,000.00 in matching funds for the membership campaign as it relates to the Ruth Mott Fund. If the grant from that foundation is denied, then those funds are to be directed to support MOFFA's annual Harvest Festival in Lansing. The motion was seconded and passed.
MLT Library: Jon has the book list on disc. At present, the books are available at Jon and Bobbi's farm until a permanent location can be decided.
Homesteading School Reunion Update: Jon has addresses for quite a few former students. He has sent out a form letter and continues to make efforts to locate alumni.
MLT Web Page: Jon reports that it includes a permacuiture slide show. The site receives about one hit a day.
Newsletter: The ten year retrospective is in the works and due out this summer.
In other discussion, land use issues were brought up, and farmland preservation was discussed. Communication in these areas will continue. The next meeting is set for Sunday, September 14, 1997 at Mike and Lisa's. With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Sharon Crotser, Secretary
Jon Towne was kind enough to download the MLT web page so that I could peruse. He did a real nice job providing a good overview of both our organization and the application of permaculture to his family's farm. To see for yourself you can reach Jon at tomar@cybersol.com.
Board of Directors
Sharon Crotser
Kenneth Dahlberg
Barbara Geisler
Maynard Kaufman
Lee Maher
Lisa K.J. Phillips
Michael Phillips
Thom Phillips
Jon Towne
Newsletter update- several new submissions have already trickled in. Hopefully, another issue will be out in November. As always, essays, reviews, and poetry are welcome. We haven't run any reviews in quite a while. If anyone has run across some interesting texts or publications, please consider sharing with the membership. Also, thanks to Sharon Crotser for providing the art work in this issue of the newsletter.
Next Meeting: is set for Sunday, September 14, 1997 at the home of Mike and Lisa Phillips (84757 28th Street, Lawton; phone 1-616-624-6968 for directions and more information). Agenda items include a MOFFA update and plans for the schools of homesteading reunion. Potluck begins at 5 PM, and I guarantee that what could otherwise be a grueling business meeting will be punctuated with sparkling and perhaps brilliant conversation. As always, all are welcome.
Michael Phillips, Editor
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